Another one of my strange question and topic.
So, guys, I don’t have any training partner and I’m forced to play against the CPU to understand the base of character that I rarely play online.
However, the highest difficult where I can actually play and train is ‘Hard’ because the CPU block EVERYTHING I do, every mixup, every setup, tech every throw and so on…
So, at this point, I started to think that the CPU doesn’t train me against character that I don’t know.
It doesn’t train me at all because it read all my command and actually there’s no mind game involved.
My point is: is the CPU a valid help to understand the game?
I try with the Shadow Lab, but doesn’t help me.
There are more “human routine” involved but doesn’t seems a valid help.
The CPU does very little to help you with the understanding of an online matchup. They can react to unreactable moves, block whenever they feel like, and will often break whenever they please as opposed to a human player having to critically think about what to break.
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My opinion is, to an extent, yes it does help. It doesn’t really help a lot from a strategy standpoint, but it helps a lot for nailing down techniques in a more realistic environment than what Practice mode can. For the longest time I used to grind survival starting from beginner on up with a new character, and usually when I hit around 25-26 wins, I’d hop over to ranked. I’ve said it before than fighting the AI is like fighting 1 guy, and over time you learn how to do well against that 1 guy, but when you switch over to fighting someone else they will likely not play exactly like that 1 guy does.
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Fighting the AI has it’s advantages.
-It allows you to practice on a moving target, and get a feel for how your character’s combos work from Opener to Ender and everywhere inbetween.
-It’s perfect for leveling up your characters. You can get to your next match infinitely faster than if you were searching for matches in Ranked, with only a negligible XP difference. If you’re looking to unlock cool new gear, going for fight challenges in the Local modes (namely Survival and Local VS) will help you get to the new stuff ASAP.
-You’ve got all the time in the world. In an online environment, there’s 2 people (or more) who’s schedules you have to consider, but against the AI you can do whatever you like. You can go make a sandwich, you can do a billion Ultras, and the only one who may be bummed about it is you, so you could just not and solve the problem.
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I would particularly second this if you’re running KI on a decent PC like I am…load times are virtually non-existent offline, whereas online play you literally have to wait an extra 10-15+ seconds for the other guy’s XB1 to finish loading the game on his end.
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Well, considering I started on single-player way before I ever went to multiplayer, I will say it helps in the slightest.
For me, I had difficult inputting commands, during the premier of Season 2, I couldn’t even do a proper linker. I even used Thunder because his relatively easy motions. Playing single-player helped me understand the core fundementals that complimented the dojo. Sure, dojo was helpful but playing in an actual match against an AI certainly provided me with some valuable practice.
Once I fought my very first online match, I barely managed to win because I kept resorting to the same combo strings and strengths. I also didn’t understand manuals in the slightest so I locked out at almost every combo. Luckily I adapted fast and counter broke which gave me the match.
Here’s the clip for fun, I still actually have it, crazy.
http://xboxclips.com/oTiger+Spirit/f1f8de0f-e76c-4a18-a2c5-436f02df9798
I’d say the CPU isn’t a real help, as you can’t even open it up on some occasions, no matter if you know what you’re trying to do, it’ll just read inputs and stuff everything. Unfortunately the only other option you have other than playing against others to train is the Shadow Lab and even then, that doesn’t really help or at least it never really helped me personally. CPU’s good to counterbreak though if you know how to trick it into eating them.
Playing the CPU can basically only help you get in practice time with your mechanics. It is useless for developing strategies. You can’t bluff it, or fool it, or condition it. So the high level (and fun) things about playing a human opponent are simply not there. But as others have said, it can be useful for simply practicing your execution etc.
As already noted, the default AI is next to useless. They put all that effort into the superb combat design of KI, only for the default AI to thoroughly invalidate it.
Shadows AI is far more legit. They’re not sophisticated opponents – they’re very local/situational, they largely use a weighed nearest neighbor approach and some randomization to match player recordings to appropriate situations – but it means that you can run fairly sophisticated pressure strings and mixups and spacing games and what have you on them and they’ll pluck sensible responses from their recording banks, which allows you to legitimately have those interactions with a non-human opponent. Also the recordings capture the player’s response delay so you won’t get a Shadow psychically reacting to everything.
Doing better than Shadows is, to my estimation, actually a pretty hard problem.
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